


i found love (where it wasn't supposed to be)

by Potterology



Series: lavender & velvet (you know all the things i like) [1]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Identity Reveal, Lex Ya Big Creep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 12:24:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13658913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Potterology/pseuds/Potterology
Summary: "She shivers, trying to pretend it’s the chill of the penthouse."  -  A series about better angels.





	i found love (where it wasn't supposed to be)

**Author's Note:**

> Because I'm weak for Lena Luthor and questionable morality!

_i. i’ll use you as a warning sign._

 

The news reports come thick and fast, heavy-handed anchors spitting quick-fire answers to a revolving door of guests; they come armed to the teeth with opinions, a hundred thousand think pieces tucked under their arms about Lex Luthor and the threat he poses. _Consecutive life sentences, dangerous mad man, a criminal mastermind_. They bandy about words like _evil_ and _vile_ , compare him to Manson and every sick freak who ever graced the Earth.

Lena doesn’t disagree. But if she had a choice, it wouldn’t be on the eleven o’clock news.

The story is freshly broken, the red CNN ticker revolving with the same raw declaration: _Deranged Billionaire Escapes from Prison_. Not an unexpected reaction to her brother staging a coup within the max security facility – Anderson, one hand touched to his earpiece, relays wishy-washy details all still yet to be confirmed, but Lena hears “inmate rebellion” and downs her entire glass of wine – but it’s gaudy and makes her flinch. Her mother’s words echo some hissing diatribe about Lex, the greatest mind the world knows, tampered by obsession but still exceedingly brilliant.

His picture burns through her chest, to the pit of her stomach, right to the bone.

Bright green eyes sit in sunken cheeks, a hollow curve to his face which had never been there before – Lena thinks of plastic, some long-dead corpse encased in wet wax – and a keen anger written underneath, pouring out of him even from a generic mugshot on the television. She shivers, trying to pretend it’s the chill of the penthouse.

(The blood on his hands scares her to death; Lex was drowning in misdeeds, and Lena is not in the business of lying to herself: she knows, at the root, she is a fundamentally destructive person. Deeply dishonest, no matter how much she tries to be _good_.)

Kara calls (the ringtone gives her away).

Lena lets it run into voicemail, too stuck in place to cross the room and answer it. Just stares at until the cheery caller ID photo – Kara, grinning over a jumbo plate of potstickers, sent by Winn one Sunday afternoon – fades out, leaving the space lit only by the television and the neon flooding in from the city. Floor to ceiling windows allow for so much of the night to pour in, the sound of traffic muffled just enough to make her feel less _alone_ , and in the stark black and white minimalism, it offers a connection to the outside world.

The call jars her just enough to make her feel silly.

CNN is on low, a different anchor rattling off highlights about Lex’s last trial like it’s college basketball stats. Lena is frozen, in the dark hovering between the kitchen and living room, an empty glass in hand; her grip is bone-white where the stem is captured between her forefinger and thumb, eyes glued to the photo of her broken brother.

They must have shaved his head and he looks so much like Lionel, it _burns_.

Her university graduation photo is framed on a wall in her bedroom; they’re both smiling, Lex kissing her temple with a smile cooked into his face, the memory untainted even by the knowledge Lillian had been the one behind the camera, endeared by her son. He had whispered some awful joke into Lena’s ear and she had hugged him so tightly it hurt her ribs. She remembers it as being one of the best days of her life – but only because Lex made sure it would be.

Somebody knocks.

Lena doesn’t get a chance to answer.

 

-

 

She has never believed there are worse things than death. A simple justification: death is death. The exact antithesis of life, existence non-existent. Death is just worse. But staring into cold-fury where once there was love and joy is, without a second thought, the most truly awful thing she has ever experienced. When Edge tried to kill her, when she thought _I can die and it will be alright_ and yelled for Supergirl to _let her go_ , she wasn’t afraid. She was not afraid when Metallo came for her, she was not afraid trapped in a van with her mother, she wasn’t even especially afraid when Lillian’s henchmen threw her over the office balcony. But with Lex here in front of her now, the television still flickering, Lena is terrified.

Her therapist taught her breathing exercises. They don’t work.

Lex has always held an otherworldly look (a beautiful man, sharp, with a proud Roman nose and soft jaw), but his eyes roll in his head with every poisonous word spilling out of his mouth, gives him a snorting _colouring-outside-the-lines_ arrogant stroke. It’s so foreign to the man she remembers.

Her phone buzzes again but she’s still sandwiched between the wall and her brother.

His mouth is red, ruddy in a way that tells Lena he’s been biting the insides of his cheeks; a bad habit from youth. Lillian hated it. Lena always thought it looked rather like the death of a universe, the colour of planets separating, solar flares, cosmic radiation, shades of a burning Mars melting on Lex’s tongue. It collects at the corners of his lips.

(They’re different, too, along with the rest of him.

The charming curve of his smile has gone mouldy, mossy in the corners where spit and blood build in a crust; the flesh of his lips is purple rather than pink, the skin cracked and bitten raw.

Lex was not built for solitary confinement, a man who always loved to entertain.)

The call cuts off before he can answer it, but he puts the voicemail on speakerphone, watching every reaction in her face.

_Hey. Sorry, I know it’s late but I – um, I saw the news and thought I’d call and see if you were okay, but you’re probably asleep, or in your office, even though I really hope not, because it’s, like, crazy late and – I… sorry. Call me?_

Lex’s lip curls.

“Kara. She’s not the little reporter you’re so obsessed with, is she?”

 

_ii. if you talk enough sense, then you'll lose your mind_

 

It’s gone three in the morning and Lena is so exhausted she could weep. Lex showers and tells her they’re going to rule the world.

“I won’t help you hurt people,” she says, quiet and certain. The thought _I am the last Luthor standing_ hits her like a ten tonne truck; the only one holding up this weighty legacy with both hands and both shoulders, Atlas on a pedestal.

Lex chuckles, something reminiscent of his former self. “I’m not asking you to.” They could be talking about cheating on her finals.

“Then why are you here?”

Lex looks at her for a long time. It’s the first time since the trial she has seen him soften, the jagged and frayed lines about his person blurring into something smoother, put together, looking so much like the young man she remembers. The boy who taught her how to play chess; who dropped her at boarding school every semester in his 1979 Bonneville, sunglasses perched on his perfect head of curls; who held her hand the entire way through Lionel’s funeral; who took her to Germany when she turned eighteen and Switzerland on her twenty-first. Lex, the paragon. Lex, the angel.

“You’re my sister.”

_-_

 

When Kara does show up, it’s eight in the morning and Lena has slept as much as one can with a deranged serial killer sheltered in the guest room; she brings doughnuts and a smile, infused with the peppy enthusiasm Lena has always associated with Labradors.

(Only dampened slightly by the fact Lena doesn’t immediately step aside and let her through, lingering with the door only slightly ajar.)

 “It’s early, I know, but I tried to call last night and with the news, I just wanted to --”

Lena cuts her off with harried, aborted gesture. “Now isn’t a good time, Kara.”

It stops the blonde short, hurt flicking across her features as quick as it comes.  “Oh. Oh, okay. Right. Of course.” 

There’s an empty pause between them – Kara looks like she’s counting her own heartbeats, rocking on her heels and fiddling with her glasses, for all the world as if she’s gearing up to some Grey’s Anatomy elevator speech – and Lena lets it go for as long as she can stand.

“I’ll call you later,” she says with finality, goes to shut the door –

Except she can’t. Because Kara has flung an arm out and it stops the movement dead in its tracks.

“Except, okay, I need to tell you something and it’s important and you really need to hear it.”

That, at least, puts Lena on the back foot.

 

_iii. and i’ll use you as a focal point._

 

 

“Okay, I’m just gonna – yeah. Okay.” Kara frets with her hands, pacing a little then stopping short, walking herself in circles in Lena’s kitchen.

(It’s the farthest place from the guest bedroom they can get.)

“So. There’s something you need to know,” she starts, cutting off the protest in Lena’s throat with a look. “And I should have told you way sooner, but I just – I didn’t want anything to change – I mean, because you’re my best friend and you mean so much to me.” Kara takes a breath and it gives Lena just enough time for a sharp inhale.

It’s not the time – the exact opposite of the right time, in fact – to feel whatever strange flirtation building between them reappear once more; a tangible, electric current flowing back and forth with every interaction, mundane conversations surging with specific _undertones_.

(Lena told herself it was just a stupid crush. One-sided, _playground_.)

Kara barrels on, oblivious to the internal panic Lena is certain is playing out across her face. “I didn’t want it to be weird, I didn’t want – _this --_ ” a messy gesture between them, “-- to – I don’t want to lose you and I just –”

Lena kisses her.

It’s a stupid, reckless impulse where she is neither; Lena Luthor is careful, balanced, every move deliberate with every route of consequence considered. But Kara is twisting her hands, looking so damned earnest, and saying everything she’s wanted to hear for so long that it just ----

The kiss is brief. Joined only at a singular point.

(Electric, but quick.)

Kara’s eyes are wide open. She doesn’t kiss back. And when they break apart, Lena flushes with the most heart-wrenching embarrassment, nausea instantly wells in her stomach, waves of sickness bleeding into the trenches of her mouth. _Oh god, what did I just do?_

“That wasn’t what you were talking about, was it?”

Now is really not the time. Not with Lex still asleep down the hall, not with the news still firing out most wanted alerts, not with the NCPD parked outside the street opposite her penthouse building (and office building, for that matter, Jess has informed her) waiting for a move to be made not twelve hours after his escape.

Kara flounders.

“No, I --”

A slick pause.

Silence, until a sudden gust of bravado comes on the wind and Kara tears the glasses off her face. Yanks the ponytail out and shakes a curtain of blonde around her shoulders, fumbling with the top buttons of her shirt as the brilliant blue and red of a _butch s chest plate_ becomes visible under soft blue.

“Kara…”

“I’m Supergirl.”

 

-

 

On a level, Lena already knew.

In the way you know the Earth revolves around the sun or how to tell time: not quite sure when you figured it out, but there it is: always hiding in the back of your mind. Of course Kara is Supergirl. It explains damn near everything bizarre or strange or mysterious about her best friend, every lunch skipped out on, every last minute cancellation, hell – every odd interaction Lena had ever had with _Supergirl_.

(Flirting with the superhero was always so much fun; the world’s most powerful being blushing at some overt line was thrilling, in a self-destructive _look but don’t touch_ sort of way and Lena could never resist.

And Kara, days after, strangely jealous.)

It explains the bizarre cosmic appetite tied to the insanely excellent shape Kara keeps.

Lex is three rooms away from his arch nemesis’ cousin.

Lena panics.

“Get out.”

It’s a savage and quiet whisper, brutal in the battering way it breathes out behind her teeth, tepid and sighing. Lena keeps her eyes trained on the spot where the crest of El must sit under Kara’s pastel, harmless sweater, dares not move an inch for the chance it might startle anyone. ( _Herself_. If she looks up now, she’ll be lost to the most brilliant blue she has ever known.) Kara seems singularly focused on not looking like someone just shot her dog.

“W-what?” she stutters softly. Lena fights a cringe.

There is so much hurt written in the body language of the Kryptonian (fucking Christ, Kara is Supergirl, sweet and clutzy _mild-mannered reporter Kara Danvers_ has laser vision and could crush skulls with one hand). Lena wants to take it back, but she can’t risk it.

So, instead, she sighs a defeated quiet laugh and shrugs.

“Get out.”

 

_vi. so i don’t lose sight of what i want._

 

Lex appears as the door slams behind Kara, foggy eyed and suspicious; looks remarkably better with a few hours of uninterrupted sleep about him. He seems more like her brother and less like a criminal in the morning sunshine.

Lena feels anything but forgiving, the sharp memory of _Kara_ still tingling along her mouth.

“The reporter?” he asks, in a sinister, threading way he developed in the last year of his freedom, a slow creep into glassy and foaming at the mouth with the very mention of Superman.

Lena bristles. “She’s not any of your concern.” Puffing up, Lex hulks towards her.

(And it is a hulk: for the first real time since he reappeared in her apartment, Lena sees him in the natural light and cannot help but step back, stopped in retreat by the marble counter at her hip. He’s broader, wider. If his winning charm has dissolved in madness and solitary, so has the slim whip genius in soft tweed sport jackets and Air Jordans; he’s sharper. _Meaner_.

He crowds her in a way that repulses Lena immediately.)

“No?”

His hands are wider than she remembers; piano player’s hands turned boxing fists. Palms burn into the thin of her biceps, the sweat of them seeping into cashmere sleeves of her dress. Lex is close enough for her to smell peppermint and blood on his breath, but this is her damned brother and she refuses to squirm, not for him, not in her own damned home.

“If you go near her, I swear I’ll --”

“You’ll what?” he asks. Quiet. Simply, as if genuinely looking for an answer. There’s an amused shrug in his voice, a dare, the way he used to goad her into stealing swigs of vodka out of Lionel’s office liquor cabinet. He breathes into her ear: “ _What will you do_?”

Lena doesn’t have an answer.

It takes a long time for her to speak; encased in the solid hold he has on her, there’s no moving out of it, but his lips press against her temple in a familiar way and her voice comes unexpectedly.

“I won’t help you hurt people,” she repeats, gentler and really meaning it. Any bite in the words is lost against his chest. Lex shifts to rest his forehead against hers, the scratch of his dry bitten lips uncomfortable against her skin.

“Yes, you will.”

 

-

 

She goes to a warehouse in Nevada but not before burying the trip in business meetings and investors lunches, slowly passing the week until she can find a break in the schedule.

 

(It takes hours to lose the police tail.)

 


End file.
